'Somatechnics' is a newly coined term used to highlight the inextricabilityof soma and techne, of the body (as a culturally intelligible construct) andthe techniques (dispositifs and ‘hard technologies’) in and through whichbodies are formed and transformed. This term, then, supplants the logic ofthe ‘and’, indicating that technes are not something we add to or apply tothe body, but rather, are the means in and through which bodies areconstituted, positioned, and lived. As such, the term reflects contemporaryunderstandings of the body as the incarnation or materialization ofhistorically and culturally specific discourses and practices, and ofactivities involving bodies - in medicine, information technology,education, the arts, surveillance, science, law - as fundamentally formativeand transformative, cultural and social.

Abstracts (approx 500 words) are invited for papers/performances/panels forthe Somatechnics Conference to be held at Macquarie University, Sydney,Australia on April 19th-21st 2007. This is the third in a series ofbi-annual conferences: previous conferences were Body Modification: ChangingBodies, Changing Selves(2003), and Body Modification Mark II (2005).Somatechnics is the inaugural conference of the Somatechnics Project, aresearch network whose membership is international and cross-disciplinary.